“She told me about a couple of nights when she thinks she was drugged. The next time, she woke up to a box of some girl’s fingernails in her bed—”
“Oh shit,” I say, pretending to be surprised.
“And then the next…” His voice drifts, and I sit up a little straighter.
Because I know where he’s going with this story.
“She says she was attacked by some guys at a party. She doesn’t know who, and she wouldn’t go into more detail than that. All she knew was that she woke up in her apartment, and she only remembered glimpses of her stalker’s mask.”
The explanation repeats in my head, and I wonder why Bonnie is covering up the entire truth.
Because I was there when she woke up the next day.
She saw me in my suit, my hoodie, and my mask.
I know she knows more than this little story.
“Did she say the date or anything?” I ask. “Were you able to find any information about the parties she went to?”
He blows out a breath. “I tried. She says she doesn’t remember the date, or if it was near a holiday or anything. They got in so much trouble back then that it’s hard to pinpoint any particular incidents.”
“What about following up on the parties they went to?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “They were in three cities a week on that tour,” he says. “Partying every day that they weren’t on the stage. Tracking down video from then is nearly impossible, especially when their old tour manager would let them disappear on days off. Still, there’s one party that I think might be the one she’s talking about.”
My stomach drops a little.
“Oh?”
“There was a party near the end of their first tour, before Bonnie’s first stay in rehab, when they found a guy dead in the bathroom of the club,” James says.
“Dead?” I repeat.
Because I think that’s what people do when they’re surprised.
“Dead,” he says. “The club’s entire camera system was down all night, all their registers glitched, too. There were so many people who got out of there with zero tabs that the bar lost a lot of money. The guy’s throat was slit. Someone else ended up in the hospital that night, though he says his injury had nothing to do with the dead man—even denies knowing him.”
Liar.
It had everything to do with his death.
And he should have died that night, too.
Glimpses of that night haunt the back of my mind. I crinkle the empty water bottle between my hands, fingers twisting around it just as they had one of her attackers’ neck.
They drugged her.
They tried to take her.
I lost her for five minutes, and they took her into the bathroom to ra—
I nearly hurl at the memory, the flashing images of her lying on that dirty floor and that fucking bastard on top of her while the others jerked off and kicked or slapped her, the noise of the one guy laughing and telling her she deserved—
I can hardly shake it.
Vomit-laced combat boots.
Bloody handprints smeared on a dirty tile floor.
